Better Than Sacrifice

Having just moved, I found it necessary, as I settled into my new home office, to sort through papers. Now, I don’t mind papers. I work with them all the time, and I don’t have any objection to that. But working with papers is a totally different thing than sorting papers.

I worked at it for about two hours, at the very most. It felt like an entire day. I have rarely been so exhausted.

You know as well as I do that it would have been a lot easier to have taken the entire two boxes of papers and other miscellaneous little things and thrown them directly in the trash. Much, much easier.

Such an action would not have been appropriate in my case, but I mention it to make the point that it is always easier to "shoot them all and let God sort out the bodies" than to do the sorting ourselves.

Which brings me to the "obedience is better than sacrifice" thing. You may have heard the phrase, but have you ever looked closely at what inspired it?

King Saul was told by the prophet that God wanted to use the king to wipe out a particular group of people. Every man, woman, and child was to be put to death, and not a donkey or camel, ox or sheep was to be spared. Everything was to be destroyed.

As I’ve just pointed out, it would have been an easy thing for King Saul to do. It would have been easier for him to destroy everyone, rather than sorting through it all. Obedience would have been a piece of cake compared to the path he chose.

What King Saul decided to do was to save that country’s king alive (probably a bragging rights thing) and also to save the best of the livestock. When confronted about it, he claimed that they saved them so they could sacrifice them to the Lord.

Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that it would have been more pleasing to the Lord had they obeyed, than to have them bring the fruits of their disobedience and look spiritual while they offered them to the Lord on an altar. (I personally don’t suppose they had any such intention anyway.)

We see the same concept when Jesus poked at the Pharisees for ignoring the needs of their aging parents, and instead giving generous gifts at the temple. The irrefutable truth is that what makes us feel and look super­spiritual isn’t necessarily what pleases the Lord.

So . what about the woman who ignores her husband so she can devote herself to prayer? Or the man who won’t help his wife around the house but would do any menial job the pastor asked him to do? Oh, and how can we forget about the couple who neglect their children so they can go out and save the world?

It would be easier to simply obey God.

Even if there is less applause.

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